I love SCUBA diving, but it’s also one of the more expensive hobbies out there. Fortunately, Abzu costs significantly less and provides a lot of the same feels.

When I saw Abzu for the first time, it immediately made me think of the same experiences I had diving in the ocean. That sense of being in a world teeming with life and colour. Abzu just gets it, and I’m tempted to recommend it to anyone I know who dives.

Even if you aren’t a diver, Abzu is an experience worth having for the most part. I should put emphasis on the word experience, because Abzu is not that demanding of a video game.

Developed by Giant Squid and released on PS4 and PC, Abzu is immediately worth comparing to Journey. It even has some of the same team members: art director Matt Nava and composer Austin Wintory.

Abzu’s setup is simple, you’re a diver navigating an underwater world. There’s no user interface and the game never explicitly tells you what the goal is. Like Journey, there’s bits and pieces of environmental storytelling that give hints about the history of Abzu’s world. The main goal is really just to keep moving forward.

Unlike what a lot of game design teaches players, Abzu doesn’t give you a sense of reward for conquering any complex challenges or defeating bosses. The only conventional gameplay mechanics involve some very simple puzzle solving and avoiding environmental hazards. Even if you do manage to run into something that hurts the character, you’ll never die in Abzu.

Abzu made me feel great during key moments that I felt like I was building. I felt like I was a participant in building a beautiful cutscene, such as diving from an extreme height and plunging into the depths just as a whale came swimming onto the screen. It looked like it was planned, and it probably was, but I felt like I was an active participant.

Abzu is still a video game, and there are some typical video game things it struggles with. I found myself fighting the controls frequently throughout the game. It was often difficult to get my character to move in the direction I wanted. In a game that’s just about swimming, Abzu’s swimming controls could have been better.

Abzu is more about enjoying the world’s beauty than getting the typical sense of accomplishment games try to give players. If you’re OK with chilling out for a few hours and enjoying the scenery, Abzu will satisfy.

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